Eyewitness

By Christopher Korkos

The stranger’s head hung to his chin. Sleep had gathered around his eyes and mouth, and the ice in his half-finished bourbon had long melted to join with the darker liquid. His armchair sagged in the middle, straining to retain its aged structure. The right half of his face flickered softly in the invasive light of billboards. Such was his deceit that, were Brooks to raise a thumb and hide the crusted wound in the center of the man’s chest, she might have thought him asleep.

Brooks was the first to approach the body. Forensics was still on its way, and her "partner" had hurriedly stepped outside for a smoke. She raised her left arm to the stranger’s head, feeling her wrist thrum as its intricately laced wiring connected with his backup.

Isaac Ember. Male, 68. Citizen of the Dominion.

Before digitized memory, police would cobble together stories behind each crime – groping in the dark for answers, surrendering to fragile human bias. They would create explanations where none could be found, tie pretty bows on unfinished work. But then came the Dominion, and with it, absolute efficiency.

Brooks knelt at the center of the cramped tenement, laying down a flat steel disk and hovering a hand just above its lambent center. The cipher flashed blue, then green as it synced with the two and a half petabytes now compressed into one of the spare drives in Brooks’ arm.

Is that all we are, in the end?

She pushed aside the thought, resolving to drown it in her usual vices. She had an interview to run. Brooks tapped the cipher’s green center, and the image of a man coalesced above it. His hardlight frame was hollow, as though made from bent wires, but his identity was unmistakable.

“Time to wake up.”

Isaac opened his eyes.